Boot macOS from external drive only when internal SSD is out of lifespan

nrubens wrote: "Ok but what about booting from external drives right now, with or without fully damaged internal storage?..."

See if this article helps:

Last Week on My Mac: Do you still need that external bootable disk?

"Apple silicon Macs don’t need their startup security to be changed to allow them to boot from an external disk, but if damage to internal storage is sufficiently severe to make Recovery Mode unavailable, they’re unlikely to be able to get far enough into the boot process to start up from an external disk."

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nrubens wrote:

Yeah @Alancito looks like if internal SSD is totally damaged you can't boot from external storage anymore. So the M1 devices are like iPhones with a bigger screen basically.

If Mac M1’s built-in SSD died

Well, Macs' and iPhones' architectures have been slowly converging. Note that the lowest cost MacBook Air is $999 and there are several new iPhones that are more than $1000.

According to CCC and SuperDuper, they can still create bootable clones. But according to reports in Apple Discussions and also in the forums of those two cloning products, user say that they cannot update those clones' operating systems. To update them, they need to update the internal drive and then reclone. So it might not be a fully functional clone, but maybe something for short term emergency use.

I would not stay away from M1 or M2 Macs today because of this. Your options, should the internal completely fail, are to replace the logic board, or simply rely on AppleCare. I got my wife a new M1 iMac and the AppleCare plan can be renewed each year indefinitely. So go with that and then you don't have to worry about internal SSD failure 10 years from now. But you might simply want to take your chances: ten years of AppleCare premiums can buy you a high end new Mac anyway. I would not plan on things ten years from now. We have a 2013 MacBook Air, but it can only run Big Sur; our 2015 iMac can run Monterey but won't be eligible for Ventura. So if you are dead set on keeping your Mac for ten years, realize that you won't be on the latest operating system, and it will be pretty slow compared to state of the art. Also, no one knows what Apple will do to the MacOS ten years from now, it may have a totally different architecture with different constraints on the computers running them.

Have worked with at Last 2 - 3 Users who have Nuked the Entire Drive on M1 / M2 Computers and tried to get into the the Security Setting to no avail.

Not even Revive or restore a Mac with Apple silicon using Apple Configurator would work

If off to the Professionals who have the Special Hardware / Software and Expertise to diagnose the issue and offer possible solutions

Still waiting back on the outcomes of their visits

FWIW, I had to change the startup security setting to boot my M1 MacBook Air so I would say that statement is suspect.

nrubens wrote:

Yes, it's a problem.

No, it's not. That was just viral-Apple-social-media-story-**-jour back in April 2021. Like most similar social media scoops, it was totally false.

nrubens wrote:

Please if somebody can confirm this will work or not? I don't know if the internal SSD wears out in 10 years there will be Apple official service to fix it at very reasonable price or will be out of service.

FWIW, there's no way to predict what Apple will be doing 10 years from now.

Just to add, this is currently Apple's policy. As you see, Apple does not supply parts or service for Macs over 7 years old.

Obtaining service for your Apple product after an expired warranty - Apple Support

Of course I changed it long before my M1 MBA's SSD was anywhere near dying. I'm not sure what the issue is. 10 years from now, even if today's Apple silicon Macs had a perfectly working SSD, they would most likely not be compatible with whatever version of macOS exists at the time. Just like 10 year old Macs are not compatible with today's version of macOS.

What is the point of spending more money for a premium device like an Apple, then spending more money for an external SSD, all to get a 50-90% speed reduction. For 10 years? What will you have gained in 2032? Your computer will be obsolete. And you won't ever have gotten the performance that you paid for.